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It didn’t take long into Thursday night’s first debate for the Democratic nomination for mayor to convince us we made the right decision in endorsing Eric Adams.
Asked about skyrocketing shootings, including of a child in Times Square last Saturday and a police officer on Wednesday, the other candidates lapsed into utopian talking points.
Dianne Morales and Maya Wiley ranted about defunding the police, with Wiley suggesting that “trauma” from dealing with cops is the bigger problem. Scott Stringer said police needed to get the clearance rate up. How? Who knows. Kathryn Garcia wanted gun buybacks. Andrew Yang talked about the “iron pipeline,” as if the city hasn’t been trying to stop gun smuggling for decades. Shaun Donovan wanted to empty out Rikers even more to save money.
All of them talked about how if we could just fix poverty — that little thing — it would solve crime.
Then it was Adams’ turn. Gun buybacks don’t work to get rid of the illegal guns we need to eliminate, he said. He rightly pointed out that 95 percent of the victims of gun violence are black and Hispanic. Prevention is fine, he said, “but we need intervention now.”
People are dying now. And Adams is the only Democrat talking about how to stop it.
But if we’re heartened by our choice, we’re even more worried about the alternatives. There was a lot of talk about “inequities” and not a lot of specifics on how to actually restore New York City’s economy.
Most fell back to left-wing talking points. Apparently, there is nothing that can’t be solved with some more money. Kids should be better educated, but don’t test them (Adams again stood apart, with Garcia, saying that we should keep our selective high-school exam.)
Dianne Morales, Shaun (“I worked for Obama!”) Donovan and Maya (“I’ve been black all my life”) Wiley, in particular, showed themselves to be unserious candidates to run Gotham.
Yang was more reasonable, but still dodged almost every question thrown at him.
Ray McGuire got in a good line as an outsider, asking why bureaucrats like Wiley and Stringer haven’t already fixed some of the city’s problems, given the long experience they tout as selling points.
In general, there were just too many candidates in two hours to really get into substance. And on the day that the CDC rightly said that masks are no longer needed indoors for people who are vaccinated, the Zoom format was particularly exasperating. Can we please, please have an in-person debate? Yang was on mute at the beginning of one answer. They were reduced to “Hollywood Squares” talking over each other.
The choice is pretty clear to us. The more these candidates talk, we think New Yorkers will see it as well.
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